The Best Boxer Today? Terence Crawford Puts on a Clinic to Unify Welterweight Titles

Let's face it. This was nothing new from Terence Crawford.

The 35-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska had won 39 fights. He'd knocked out 30 opponents. And he'd earned or defended titles in 17 straight appearances on the championship level.

So the idea of seeing him methodically break down a foe across a series of rounds—nine, in this case—wasn't exactly unprecedented.

But this was special.

This was Errol Spence Jr., a three-belt title claimant at welterweight who'd not come close to losing himself in 28 fights across a pro career stretching back to a quarterfinal run in the 2012 Olympics.

And incredibly, if anything, the chasm was wider. Against a fighter who'd arrived to the weekend ranked fourth on The Ring's final pre-fight pound-for-pound list. And outside of a competitive first round in which Spence was effectively aggressive and scored well to the body, it was never close.

"He saved his best performance for his biggest moment," analyst Al Bernstein said on the Showtime pay-per-view broadcast, "and perhaps against the best opponent he has faced."

And it made Crawford, already one of just nine men to earn undisputed status in any weight class since the onset of the four-belt era, the first to do it at two weights—following a previous run at 140.

The match began leaning decidedly in Crawford's direction in the second round, when Spence went to the floor for the first time in his career after being hit by an overhand left followed by a straight right.

He rose immediately and didn't appear in serious trouble, but it was an early indication that Crawford, in spite of disadvantages in height and reach and (probably, but not officially) actual in-ring weight, was the man whose power shots were going to have the most impact on the result.

The gap grew subtly with each three-minute increment as Crawford provided an answer to everything Spence and his outspoken (at least during fight week) corner team could come up with, consistently winning exchanges and offsetting any of his foe's advances with precise and decisive replies.

Bernstein and broadcast colleague Mauro Ranallo said Crawford landed 58 percent of his power shots—anything not labeled as a jab—against Spence, which is an accuracy rate typically reserved for hotshot young prospects fighting no-hope journeymen, not champions fighting other champions.

The end finally and mercifully arrived with 28 seconds remaining in Round 9, when referee Harvey Dock rescued Spence as he reeled across the ring and into the ropes after another Crawford rally.

All three judges had it 79-70 in Crawford's favor at the time of the stoppage, with two scorers giving the winner rounds two through eight while a third saw Spence the winner in only Round 3.

"I'm an overachiever," Crawford said. "I made everybody a believer. It means everything because of who I took the belts from. Tonight I believe I showed how great I am."

It was a message presumably received loud and clear by supporters of Japanese 122-pound star Naoya Inoue, whose smashing KO of Stephen Fulton earlier in the week prompted claims that he, and not Crawford, should be considered the world's top pound-for-pound fighter.

Crawford was ranked third behind Inoue and heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk by The Ring heading into Saturday's fight, while B/R's most recent poll had Crawford first, Inoue second and Usyk third, with Spence at No. 6.

The loser was gracious in the aftermath of the beating, complimenting Crawford as the two spoke in the ring just after the bout and telling Showtime's Jim Gray that it was Crawford's excellence—along with his own faulty mechanics—that led to the significant deficit between them.

"He was a better man tonight," Spence said.

"He dictated with the jab. My timing was a little bit off and he was catching me between shots. He was throwing a harder jab. He was timing with the jab. His timing was on point."

Still, though Gray implied it might be a hard sell given Crawford's virtuosity, Spence insisted he'd exercise his contractual right to seek a rematch and suggested he'd prefer it come at 154 pounds, not 147.

Making the welterweight limit has long been a struggle for the 33-year-old and he's not wrong to suggest competing with slightly different physical boundary lines might make it easier to forecast him winning.

And though prodigious youngsters like Jaron Ennis, a 26-year-old Philadelphian who's 31-0 with 28 KOs, might contend otherwise, it all but wraps things up in the division, too, for Crawford, who's stopped each of the eight opponents he's faced since last competing at 140 pounds six years ago.

He was 3-0 with one KO in title fights at 135 and 7-0 with six KOs at 140 before rising to stop one-time Manny Pacquaio conqueror Jeff Horn in nine rounds in 2018 to win his WBO belt.

So, with no disrespect to Ennis or his rising like, Crawford's bouts from here on out are about legacies, not mandatories.

"Terrence 'Bud' Crawford is the pound-for-pound king," Ranallo said. "He is one of the best I've ever seen don the gloves."

There'd been no argument here. And now everyone else knows it, too.